In this paper I argue that the language contact situation between Pirahã (Muran) andPortuguese can best be fully explained in a framework combining the theoretical approachestolanguage contact

and transfer. In this contact situation, Portuguese elements are readilyincorporated into Pirahã, while the society remains largely monolingual. Only some speakershave a limited command of Portuguese, which they employ when communicating withoutsiders. I refer to these speakers as gatekeepers, usually middle-aged men taking over thecommunication with the outside world. Their speech is lexically Portuguese, but showsconsiderable interference from Pirahã. This could be due to their limited proficiency inPortuguese, forcing the speakers to draw heavily on the structures of their L1 (the transferperspective). On the other hand, it could also be analysed as heavy borrowing of Portugueselexical elements into a Pirahã frame (the language contact perspective). The result of bothperspectives is an

interlingual variety, used for the purpose of communicating with outsiders.Focusing on expressions of quantities in the language of thegatekeepers, I will argue for acombination of the borrowing or transfer frameworks in the analysis of this contact situation.

This paper aims to evaluate how different theoretical approaches to language contact andtransfer can be combined in studying interference phenomena in the contact situationbetween Pirahã (Muran) and Portuguese. Pirahã is spoken by approximately 450 people, wholive along the Maici river in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.ii

The other Muran languages arethought to have been given up, and as the last surviving member of this unclassified languagefamily, Pirahã can be regarded a language isolate(Everett, 2005,p.

622).

The Pirahã language has been at the centre of a debate in linguistics (e.g. Frank et al.,2008; Nevins, Pesetsky & Rodrigues, 2007,

2009; Everett, 2009), following two recentpublications claiming thatthelanguage lacks certain linguistic categories. Gordon (2004)studied the system of numerals, claiming that the Pirahã do not count and only use three verybasic, approximate numbers. Everett (2005) went further, identifying a number of othercategories absent from Pirahã, including recursion, colour terms and relative tenses. Everett(2005,p.

622) argues that these absent categories can be explained by a cultural constraint ofimmediacy of experience, which affects the language structure. This effect can, according toEverett,

also be extended to the absence of creation myths and other stories, as well as to thefact that the Pirahã have remained largely monolingual, even though they are in frequentcontact with Portuguese-speaking outsiders. Everett (2005,p.

626) discusses how thePirahãs’ “Portuguese is extremely poor […] but they can function in these severelycircumscribed situations”, referring to trade negotiations with outsiders and that it “is notclear that the Pirahã understand even most of what they are saying in such situations”.

There is a diminishing number of Amazonian languages with a large number ofmonolingual speakers and it is rare to find almost entirely monolingual groups. Even moresurprising is it when these

groups, like the Pirahã, have been in frequent

contact withpredominantly Portuguese-speaking outsiders over the last few centuries (Everett, 2005,p.

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

4

621). Some of Everett’s (1986) examples seem to show that the Pirahã may understand, aswell as use, a fair amount of Portuguese, cf. example (1) (Everett, 1986,p.

223):iii

(1)

Batío

PÁGA

PÓOKO

‘Oogiái

hi

MAIS

PAGA

Martinho

pay

little

‘Oogiái

3

more

pay

BÍI.

well

‘’Oogiái pays better than Martinho.’

The question is therefore whether the Pirahã are indeed monolingual and to what

degree theirlanguage has been influenced by Portuguese. I conducted fieldwork on the contact situationbetween Pirahã and Portuguese, the findings of which will be the basis of the discussions inthis paper.iv

2. Approaches to interference (language contact and transfer)

There seems to be a general consensus that the systematic studies of language contact as wellas transfer were pioneered in the late 1940s and 1950s,above all

by Haugen’s (1950) andWeinreich’s (1953) influential studies (in the remainder of the paper I use Weinreich’s terminterference

as a cover term for language contact and transfer when referring to both). In theyears and decades following these initial publications, the studies of language contact, on theone hand, and transfer, onthe other, followed overall different paths of development.Language contact studiesprogressed

within theoretical linguistics, while transfer studiesbecame associated with studies of second language acquisition, generally considered withinthe frame of applied linguistics.

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

5

Approaches tolanguage contact

are found in various subfields of theoreticallinguistics, in particular sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and linguistic typology.

In many cases the contact phenomena looked at are at the levelof society, such as‘propagated’ loans that have been accepted by speakers of a group (Croft, 2000). Prominentsubfields include the studies of linguistic areas (e.g. Campbell et al., 1986), borrowinghierarchies (e.g. Moravcsik, 1978; Thomason & Kaufman,

located on a scale. It places code-switching by individualspeakers at the early stages and borrowing within society at the later stages of the continuum,making the distinction between contact phenomena at the level of the individual versus thatof society less clear-cut. Other recent studies furthermore include psycholinguistic findingson language processing (e.g. Matras, 2000; Matras & Sakel, 2007a).

Transfer, on the other hand, is associated with studies of second languageacquisition, as well as language attrition and generally associated with applied linguistics.The focus of transfer studies was traditionally the language use of individual speakers. Themain concern was the immediate effect of language structures from one language being usedin another. Historically, transfer was a prominent aspect of behaviourist studies of

secondlanguage acquisition, in particular Fries (1945) and Lado (1957), both contemporaries ofHaugen and Weinreich. In this framework, transfer in second language acquisition was seenPirahã-

Portuguese contact

6

as inevitable due to linguistic habits formed in the first language (L1) being transferred to asecond language (L2). It was assumed that difficulties during L2 acquisition could be tracedback to L1 influence: when the two languages were similar, learning was said to befacilitated, while differences would lead to difficulties in language learning. In the followingdecades, this was heavily contested, not the least due to a paradigm shift away frombehaviourism (cf. Odlin, 1989,p.

17ff). Many researchers downplayed the role of the L1 inL2 acquisition, claiming that L1 and

22). This led to negative connotations associatedwith the term transfer, which is one of the reasons for various modern theories using ‘cross-linguistic influence’ instead (e.g. Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008). Despite all this, transfercontinues to be considered an important process in L2 acquisition, and many different studieshave been carried out in recent years, for example within cross-linguistic language processing(e.g. Costa et al., 2003; Cook et al., 2003), grammatical categories affected (e.g. Sjöholm,1995; Dewaele & Veronique, 2001) and language attrition (e.g.Berman & Olshtain, 1983;Köpke et al., 2007) to name but a few. Jarvis & Pavlenko (2008,p.

5-6) argue that thetransfer framework has reached a point at which results from individual studies can becompared in order to develop theoretical models that explain under which conditions transferoccurs. They distinguish between learning-related and performance-related transfer, theformer being the traditional focus of transfer in L2 acquisition. Performance-related transfer,on the other hand, looks at cross-linguistic influence in the speech of bilinguals, which istraditionally the topic of language contact studies. The central focus is no longer simpleforward transfer, i.e. generally transfer from an L1 into an L2, but also reverse transfer (L2into an L1) and other types of cross-linguistic influence.

As a result, there are a number of intersections inthe phenomena studied by the fieldsof contact and transfer. These are also acknowledged in various publications, though oftenPirahã-

Portuguese contact

7

theyaretreated as separate approaches.Thomason & Kaufman

(1988,p.

37) combine studiesof transfer and language contact, distinguishing between borrowing and substratuminterference, i.e. transfer.Odlin’s (1989) work on transfer relates to Thomason andKaufman’s (1988) approach and also incorporates findings fromlanguage contact theory,such as pidgins and creoles and linguistic areas. In this way, he adds a diachronic dimension,placing transfer studies in relation to both the individual and societal contact-induced change.Winford

(2003) and Matras (2009) discuss second language acquisition alongside languagecontact, albeit in separate chapters. A number of studies consider some aspects of transferand contact theory together, including studies of immigrant languages (e.g. Clyne, 2003) andpidgin and creole languages. In the case of the latter, second language acquisition, aswell asthe influence of substrate languages have always been central themes. Mufwene (2008,p.

134, 149ff) points out additional ways in which a combination of the studies on transfer insecond language acquisition and substrate influence in pidgins and creoles can benefit eachother.

Even in these approaches, a general distinction between transfer and contact isgenerally upheld. Is this really warranted? The two approaches are looking at the samephenomena from two different angles: language contact studies today investigate individualand societal phenomena, as well as on-the-spot switches and propagated loans. Contactstudies appreciate the transient nature of interference phenomena, as is inherent to studies ofL2 acquisition. Transfer studies look at

cross-linguistic influence not only in languagelearners, but also in bilinguals, both at an individual and a society level (e.g. Jarvis &Pavlenko, 2008, p.

30), as well as in different directions. Hence, both language contact andtransfer studies look at the same outcomes.

Having this overlap means that the approaches can profit from one another’s findings.For example, contact theory can contribute with knowledge about borrowing hierarchies andPirahã-

Portuguese contact

8

the ways in which loans are incorporated into another language, based on recent typologicalstudies and theoretical advances in grammatical and lexical borrowing (e.g. Matras & Sakel,2007b; Haspelmath & Tadmor, 2009; Heine & Kuteva, 2005). This knowledge could help tofine-tune methodologies in transfer studies:

for example, Jarvis (1998) argues that one wouldconsider three different types of evidence in establishing whether something is transfer:intragroup homogeneity, intergroup heterogeneity and cross-linguistic performance congruity(cf. also Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p.

35). From a contact-linguistic perspective, the secondone of these-

intergroup heterogeneity-

is problematic. It states that researchers trying toidentify transfer will have to look for “Evidence that the behaviour in question is notsomething that all language users do regardless of the combinations of L1s and L2s that theyknow.” (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p.

35). However, findings in contact theory have shownthat contact phenomena between languages are often very similar, irrespective of the L1s andL2s involved (e.g. Matras, 2007) for a variety of reasons. These findings would thus have tobe considered in transfer methodology dealing with intergroup heterogeneity, as structuresfrequently affected by contact could be excluded for the wrong reasons.

75). Formaltransfer caninvolvefalse cognates or unintentional borrowing, semantic transfer relates to the use of a target-language word, but influenced by another language. They contrast with conceptual transfer,which stems from differences in the “ways in which conceptual representations are structuredand mapped to language.” (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p.

112). This classification of instancesof transfer relates to some degree to a distinction made in contact theories betweenmatter

andpattern

loans (Matras & Sakel, 2007a; Sakel, 2007). Matter loans can be defined asmorphophonological material from one language, used in another, e.g. the wordigloo

being aPirahã-

Portuguese contact

9

loan from Greenlandicigdlov

‘house’. Therefore, many matter loans would be consideredinstances of formaltransfer. Pattern loans are not using foreign material; rather, they usenative elements to express a concept from another language (and are also referred to ascalques). A typical pattern loan is the GermanWolken-kratzer

(lit. ‘clouds-scraper’),modelled

solely on the pattern of the English wordsky-scraper. Pattern loans could, to somedegree at least, be aligned with semantic transfer. Conceptual transfer, on the other hand, canlead to various outcomes: these are often changes in the patterns, but in some casesconceptual transfer can also motivate matter loans. This is for example the case in theSpanish of immigrants in New York as analysed by Otheguy & Garcia (1993), where theconcepts of houses (Span.casa) and buildings (Span.edifício) does not match the Englishequivalents: acasa

is generally less than 3 stories high, otherwise, the wordedifício

would beused. In English, however, ‘house’ would still be appropriate. Similarly, the concept ofskyscrapers did not match the Spanish concept ofedifício, leading to the need for introducingthe new termbildin

as a matter loan (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008, p.

161, citing Otheguy &Garcia, 1993). It would bevaluable

for contact theory to take into account the distinctionbetween linguistic and conceptual transfer, in particular for studies that look at how patternloans come about (e.g.Matras & Sakel, 2007a).

Jarvis & Pavlenko (2008, p.

234) alsoacknowledge the need to correlate findings from studies of transfer and language contact infuture investigations.

There are a number of obstacles in the form of terminology, as well as underlyingassumptions particular to each field. For example, an issue that has been greatly discussed inboth approaches is the importance of the similarity between the languages

own terms: studies of L2 acquisition have shown that learning a language similar to one’sfirst language is easier than learning a typologically different language (e.g. Ringbom, 2007).Also, when speakers assume and perceive similarities between languages, they are morelikely to transfer elements between the languages (Odlin & Jarvis, 2004). Studies of languagecontact, on the other hand, focusing on bilinguals rather than learners, have found that similarcontact phenomena appear between languages independent of typological similarities orgenetic relations (cf.Matras, 2009, p.

162). Rather, other factors may play a role such as thecontribution of the element borrowed to the processing of utterances (Matras, 2009, p.

163).Talking about the impact of similarities between languages, it would make sense to use Jarvis& Pavlenko’s (2008) distinction between learning-related transfer (in which similarities makelearning another language easier) versus performance-relatedtransfer (in which similaritiesdo not play a role as the speakers are bilingual). Rather than regarding these as two opposites,one could place them on a continuum: with increased bilingual language proficiencysimilarities between the languages become less important in relation to transfer, while otherfactors, such as ease of processing, become more important.

3. Portuguese loanwords in Pirahã

When I first started looking at the Pirahã data, Iwassurprised by how many Portugueselexemes were used, especially in the light of Everett’s claim of monolingualism. Thefollowing are some examples of Portuguese lexical elements found in Everett’s(1986)

grammatical sketch of Pirahã. I have heard most of these used by speakers of Pirahã ofdifferent generations

embora). These loans are integrated into the phonological system of Pirahã, which usuallymeans undergoing considerable sound changes, since the consonant and vowel inventories ofPirahã are smaller than those of Portuguese (Everett, 1986, p.

315).

Non-native sounds areadjusted to a near Pirahã equivalent (e.g. f>p incafé > kapí). This can at times lead to highlydisguised loans (cf.kaí

=casa

andbikagogía

=mercadorias). An added complication is thatPirahã has a variety of interchangeable allomorphs (Everett, 1986, p.

136). For example [d]and [g] can alter inbikagogía, bikadogía

‘merchandise’ or [g] and [n] ingahiáo, nahiáo

‘plane’.vi

The loans alsoappearto be partially integrated into the Pirahã tonal system, as wellas following the native syllable structure.

The following example shows the use ofnahiáo

‘plane’ by a monolingual Pirahãwoman hearing somebody further upriver shout that a plane is about to arrive:

(2)

NAHIÁO,

’iiaii,

kao.

plane

DIR

far

‘a plane, it is there, far away’ [monolingual Pirahã woman]

Example (3) was recorded from a gatekeeper, who insertstópagai

‘doing somethingtechnical, such as recording, playing a video, taking a photo, etc.’, originally from English‘tape recorder’ andtrevisão

‘television’ from Portuguese. The latter refers to one particulartelevision and video recorder set, operated by a generator, that is brought out to entertain theentire village when outsiders are visiting.

(3)

Ai

Pao'ai

hi

’abóp-ap-ao

TÓPAGAI

DM

Dan

3SG

return-PUNCT-temp

technical.V.Engl

kóbai-kói

TREVISÃO.

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

12

watch-EMPH

television.Pt

‘At the point of time when Dan has returned we will watch videos.’[GK1]vii

Most of these loans refer to specific items or actions associated with modern lifeintroducedby outsiders. These include ‘planes’, ‘houses’, specific ‘boats’ and the verb ‘to pay’. Anumber of other concepts that exist in Pirahã have been borrowed, for exampleambora

‘goaway’ (in various

forms). It is used in Pirahã to refer to a place ‘far away’. Originally, thiswas probably used to refer to a place far away where outsiders live (4), but I have alsorecorded it being used when talking about Pirahã families, like in (5). Both examples areuttered by a gatekeeper:

appear even in cases of casual contact with no, or only restricted, bilingualism.Theintroduction ofnew concepts such as ‘a plane’ and ‘to pay’ may trigger the need in alanguage to get words for these items. The new expressions can either be matter or patternloans or mixtures of these. Matter loans, as in Pirahã, are generally easily incorporated andmay undergo some phonological integration in the recipient language. The fact that thePirahã readily take over matter loans from other languages, in particular Portuguese, showsthat they do not have taboos against borrowing, as in other areas of the Amazon (Aikhenvald,2002). In the latter case, matter loans are heavily restricted due to cultural constraints againstborrowing.

Everett (2005) argues that a different type of cultural constraint-

the immediacy ofexperience principle-

restricts not only Pirahã grammar, but alsoinfluences the widespreadmonolingualism among the Pirahã. He statesthat “It should be underscored here that thePirahã ultimately not only do not value Portuguese (or American) knowledge but oppose itscoming into their lives.” (Everett, 2005, p.

626). My own impression is that the Pirahã dovalue some aspects of the outside world, for example goods such as fishing line and tobacco.Linguistically, the items from outside are generally referred to by matter loans fromPortuguese, so

they stand out in the language as foreign. One could speculate that the Pirahãfeel confident in their culture and language and do not regard loanwords from otherlanguages as ‘threatening’ to their culture.

4. Gatekeepers: Pirahã and Portuguese

The concept of ‘gatekeeper’ is used by researchers in a wide variety of fields. In psychology,Lewin (1952) originally applied the term to housewives controlling (and thus ‘gatekeeping’)the eating habits of families (Yang, 2007), while in human geography a gatekeeper is oftenassociated with facilitating access to key resources (Campbell et al., 2006). In this way,Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

14

gatekeepers may have power over their group, being the link between them and the outsideworld. In my study, I focus on the gatekeepers’ role of providing a linguistic link between thePirahã and the outside world.

The Pirahã gatekeepers belong to a small number of key members of the group, allmiddle-aged men, who know some rudimentary Portuguese and take over the task ofcommunicating with the outside world when necessary. Their command of Portuguese varies.My impression is that gatekeeper (GK) 1 has the highest command of Portuguese, whilesome of the others, represented here by examples from GK3, have only restricted knowledgeof the other language.

Communication in Portuguese usually happens when outsiders come to the Pirahã,rather than vice versa, as the Pirahã rarely go away from their area. The visitors aregovernmental health-workers, educators and other officials, but also linguists andmissionaries. For the gatekeepers the aim seems to be to facilitate communication, rather thancommunicating fluently in Portuguese. Example (6) is of my first encounter with agatekeeper:

(6)

Researcher:

Você

fala

português?

you

speak.2/3SG

Portuguese

‘Do you speak Portuguese?’

GK3:

SABE,

SABE.

know.2/3SG

know.2/3SG

‘I do.’ (lit. ‘you know’). [GK3]

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

15

The Brazilian Portuguese answer would probably befalo

‘I speak it’ oreu sei

falar portuguêslit. ‘I know (how) to speak Portuguese’. The formsabe

used here is the conflated 2nd

and 3rd

person singular form of ‘to know’ in Brazilian Portuguese. The reason this form is used isprobably that the speaker originally repeated a verb form from the input ‘você

sabefalarportuguês’. One could argue that

since my question did not use the formsabe, it functions asan overgeneralised, general form of the verb ‘to know’ and has become this speaker’s default

answer to this question and I have also found it used as a repetition by another gatekeeper(GK1). Indeed,sabi

is a general form used by various pidgins of different lexifier language toexpress ‘to know’ (cf. Sebba, 1997, p.

73). This form is, in the same was as in the language ofthe gatekeepers, based on the 2nd

and 3rd

person singular of the Portuguese verbsaber‘toknow’.viii

I have observed that repetition and partial repetition of what is said is an importantdiscourse strategy in Pirahã and is also very common among gatekeepers speaking withoutsiders. The speakers repeated many things I said, even at one point a remark regardingmeta-data I made to the recorder in Danish.

I tried to see if GK3 wouldrepeat the 1st

person singular form if that was present inthe input, and indeed that is what I got:

(7)

Researcher:

O

que

estão

fazendo?

ART.M

what

be.3PL

doing

‘What are they doing?’

GK3:

aiii

ti,

ai

NO

SABE

ai,

DM

1SG

DM

NEG

know.2/3.SG

DM

ai

NO

SABE.

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

16

DM

NEG

know.2/3.SG

‘Well, I, don’t know, I don’t know.’

Researcher:

No

sei.

NEG

know.1SG

‘I don’t know.’

GK3:

Ai

NO

SE(I)

ai.

DM

NEG

know.1SG

DM

‘I don’t know.’

My inputsei

is repeated here, flanked by discourse markers (DM), which are very frequent inPirahã and which are often used to mark boundaries of propositions (Sakel & Stapert, 2009).These boundaries facilitate the expression of complex thoughts through juxtaposition, ratherthan syntactic recursion (Sakel, 2010b; Sakel & Stapert, 2009).

Discourse markers arelikewise prevalent in the language of the gatekeepers, marking boundaries of propositionsthat are juxtaposed in order to express complex thoughts (Sakel, 2010b).

My main focus in the present study is on expressions of quantity in the language ofthe gatekeepers and in Pirahã, but complexity-

or rather, the lack thereof-

will play amarginal role in my discussion. Let me briefly return to example (1), listed at the beginningof this paper:

(1)

Batío

PÁGA

PÓOKO

’Oogiái

hi

MAIS

PAGA

Martinho

pay

little

’Oogiái

3

more

pay

BÍI.

well

‘’Oogiái pays better than Martinho.’

(from Everett, 1986, p.

223)

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

17

This is very different from the way comparison is expressed in Portuguese (8a) butapproximates the way a comparative construction can be expressed in Pirahã:

221). In Pirahã,comparison is expressed by juxtaposing two modifiers such as-baaí‘good, much’ andbaábí

‘bad’ (8b). According to Everett (2005, p.

624) Pirahã has no quantifiers such as ‘all’,‘every’, ‘most’, ‘each’ and ‘few’. Those elements that express quantities in Pirahã havedifferent truth conditions from e.g. English quantifiers, and this claim can be extended to thelack ofa system of numerals in the language. Frank (et al.) have shown that there is no exactway of expressing quantities in Pirahã, while there are quite a few expressions that can beused toindicate

small and large quantities in the language. Variousinstances

of these can befound in the examples given by Everett (1986, 2005), including’oíhi‘small, few’,’apagí‘much, mass nouns’ (9),’aaíbái‘much, count nouns’ (10),’ogií‘big, much’ and

báagi

/baágiso, much, used with less tangible elements such as days’ (11) (Everett, 1986, p.

273-4)or ‘cause to come together [loosely ‘many’]’ (Everett, 2005, p.

623). These expressions differregarding the type of noun (e.g. count / mass) they modify, and they are generally broad inPirahã-

Portuguese contact

18

meaning, expressing both ‘quantity’such as’oíhi‘few’ and ‘quality’ such as the same word’oíhi, meaning ‘small’ Everett (1986, p.

274).

(9)

’agaísi

’apagí

’ao’aagá

’oí

kapió’io.

manioc meal

much

exist

jungle

other

‘There is a lot of manioc meal in another jungle.’ From Everett (2005,

p.

623)

(10)

’aoói

’aaíbái

’ao’aagá

’oí

kapió’io.

foreigner

many

exist

jungle

other

‘There are many foreigners in another jungle.’From Everett (2005, p.

623)

(11)

Hi

hoa

baágiso

’ab-óp-ai.

3

day

many/much

turn-go-ATELIC

‘He will return in several

days.’ (from Everett, 1986, p.

273)

These expressions of quantity can be used in Pirahã comparative constructions, contrastingsmall and large quantities by juxtaposition, as in (8b). The way the gatekeeper expressescomparison in example (1) conforms to

this Pirahã pattern. Firstly, the two clauses arejuxtaposed, rather than appearing in a Portuguese comparative construction withque

(8a).Everett (1986, p.

223) already notes that this construction is reminiscent of the original Pirahãconstruction, apart from the use of the Portuguese comparative quantifiermais. InPortuguese,mais

‘more’ is a suppletive comparative form of the quantifiermuito‘much’. Ihave various examples of gatekeepers using bothmuito

andmais

in my corpus. Could thismean that the Portuguese used by gatekeepers has a special form only used in comparativeconstructions, that is the formmais

‘more’ was borrowed together with its Portuguesefunction ‘comparative’? The answer to this is negative, as my corpus reveals variousexamples ofmais

being used in non-comparative constructions, for example to express ‘very’Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

19

in (12) where the gatekeeper explains to me that the Pirahãs’ hunting grounds are very faraway:

(12)

Ee

NOOOYJJJ,

ee

NOOOYJJJ

MAAS

ee.

DM

far

DM

far

more

DM

‘Itis far, it is very far.’[GK1]

(Portuguese:é muito longe)

The Portuguese equivalent of this would use the non-comparative formmuito

‘very’, i.e. thequantifiermais

does not appear to have a comparative meaning in this case. This is confirmedby otherexamples,mai(s)used in the constructions ‘very close’ (13) and ‘many things’ (14):

(13)

Ee

MAI

PEETO

ai.

DM

more

close

DM

‘Yes, it is very close.’ (again used in a non-comparative sense). [GK1]

(14)

Ai

MAI

COOSA

ai,

CARREGA

AQUI

BALSA.

DM

more

thing

DM

bring.2/3.SG

here

riverboat

‘The river boats bring many things here.’ [GK1]

The general (and in Brazilian Portuguese non-comparative) form of the quantifiermuito

i.e.directly opposite from its use with mass nouns in Portuguese.Mais, on the other hand, doesnot express comparison as in Portuguese, but is used with large quantities or distances, e.g.‘far away’, ‘many things’. In this way it is used similar to Pirahã modifiers in that it expressesboth quantity and quality (cf. discussion above and Everett, 1986, p.

274). The function ofmais

in the speech of the gatekeepers is probably toquantify and qualify less tangibleelements, similar tobáagiso, ‘much, used with less tangible elements such as days’ (Everett,1986, p.

274).x

Coming back to example (1) above, the use ofmais

by the gatekeeper could beanalysed as an

instance of doubling of the positive element in ‘a lot; well’, rather than as anoutright comparative element. The gatekeepers will have come across the wordmais

‘more’in the input in similar situations. They replicate it in their language, without the comparativeconnotations.xi

Indeed, the quantifying elementsmais

andmuito

seem to be used with ageneral gist of the original Portuguese meaning of ‘large quantity’, while being assignedPirahã-

Portuguese contact

21

functions similar to those in Pirahã. This extends to situations where Portuguese would

usenumerals, cf. the use ofmuito

in (17).

(17)

Researcher:

CUANTOS

MENINOS

TEM

VOCÊ?

how.many

children

have.2/3.SG

you

‘How many children have you got?’

GK1:

MUIIITO!

eeh

MUITO

many

DM

many

‘Many, many’

The gatekeeper is giving a serious answer to the

questionin(17), i.e. he is not being flippant.Rather, Portuguese

muito

is used to express a large number of count-nouns (children), forwhich in Pirahã the speaker may have usedbáagiso

‘much, less tangible elements’ oraíbái‘much,count nouns’.

This is reminiscent of native Pirahã, which has a three way system of expressingquantities

(Frank et al., 2008;Gordon, 2004; Everett, 2005):hói

‘one; few’,hoí

‘roughly two;some’ andbaágiso

‘many’. The latter has other variants, Gordon

(2004) mentions alsoaikaagi.xii

While gatekeepers usemuito

to express large quantities of count nouns, they wouldalsooccasionally use Portuguese number-words in order to express quantities. This isparticularly the case when the topic of the discussion

relates to the outside world, and may bedue to them repeating what outsiders have said to them. For example, when asked about thejourney times to the closest town Humaitá, the gatekeepers sometimes made use ofPortuguese numerals to express distance (18) and (19):

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

22

(18)

‘NMAITÁ

ayí

TREE

DIA

aii

Humaitá

DM

three

day

DM

ai

TREE

DIIA

A

MAITÁ

ayÍ

DM

three

day

to

Humaita

DM

‘To Humaita, it’s three days, well, three days to Humaita.’ [GK1]

(19)

Ai

CIDAD

DE

PODE

DM

town

from

bridge

ai

TEEEPO

hh

NAMAITÁ

DM

time

DM

Humaita

hh

ai

DOI

DIA

ai

HOOTE

ai.

DM

DM

two

day

DM

boat

DM

‘Well, (to get to) town from the bridge, it’s some time (to) Humaitá, well two

days (by) boat.’xiii

[GK2]

These expressions oftree diia

‘three days’ anddoi dia

‘two days’ would typically be foundinthe input from outsiders visiting the area by boat. They could be related to Pirahã

mediumand large quantities (direct translations of ‘two’ and ‘three’). Nothing in my data suggeststhat these low numbers are not

already developing into separate concepts in Pirahã, referringto a fixed set of days altogether, although occurrence of numbers outside this topic oftransport was very restricted and generally triggered by repetition of something I had saidbefore. Theuse of numbers in this way was probably also facilitated by Keren Everett,having taught numbers to the Pirahã for many years (field observations & Everett, 2005, p.

625).

To conclude, my findings suggest that the Pirahã gatekeepers make use of Portuguese

lexicon, adjusted to the conceptual patterns of Pirahã. The gatekeepers repeat PortuguesePirahã-

Portuguese contact

23

elements from the input,and when these situations recur in specific situations (i.e. this doesnot include the repetition of my remarks in Danish) the gatekeepers start making semanticlinks between the Portuguese words and the speech context. This can lead to the replicationof words in certain environments, e.g.sabe

in (6). Other elements, such as those denotingquantities, are identified in the input and used ina way similar to the Pirahã structure. Oftenonly an aspect of the meaning is captured, e.g.mais

(12)-(14) is an expression of quantity inthe language of the gatekeepers, rather than comparison.

5. Discussion and conclusion

Can the phenomena found be fully explained from either the transfer perspective or thecontact perspective? We could argue that the gatekeepers insert Portuguese words into aPirahã frame and this could be analysed as extensive lexical borrowing from Portuguese intoPirahã. When speaking to monolingual Pirahãs, gatekeepers would only need to usePortuguese loans when referring to outside elements. When speaking to an outsider, however,they would accommodate and insert as many Portuguese elements intotheir

language as theycan, with the goal to facilitate communication.xiv

Linguistically, whether a Pirahã speaker is agatekeeper or not seems to depend on his level of knowledge of the Portuguese lexicon.There appears to be a scale between gatekeepers and non-gatekeepers: gatekeepers usemorePortuguese lexicon in an underlying Pirahã frame.

On the opposite, the transfer approach would argue that there is a major differencebetween Pirahã, which includes some Portuguese loans and the language of the gatekeepers.The latter are speaking Portuguese, or at least an interlanguage, which is heavily influencedby Pirahã. This involves linguistic transfer of discourse markers and some other elements, aswell as conceptual transfer, for example in the way of expressing quantities. The Portugueseof the gatekeepers is arguably rudimentary, meaning that acquisition is at an early stage andPirahã-

Portuguese contact

24

potentially fossilized. Furthermore, their knowledge of Portuguese is restricted to certaindomains, in particular trade, to facilitate communication with outsiders. In this way, thelanguage of the gatekeepers could be considered a pidgin.Indeed, the language has structuresreminiscent of trade languages, such as absence of morphological inflections, absence oftense and aspectual distinctions and a simple syntax

making use of paratactic constructions.However, these are not only traits of pidgins, but also of the Pirahã language itself.xv

Some ofthe underlying concepts, on the other hand, are clearly based on Pirahã, rather than beingsimplifications. The example

presented here is the expression of quantification in thegatekeepers’ language.

The discussion so far is reminiscent of the relexification versus substrate debate inpidgin and creole studies (e.g. Lefebvre, 1998; Keesing, 1991). Relexification could be seenas parallel with extensive Portuguese borrowing into Pirahã (such as could be argued for inexamples 15 and 16), while substrate influence would be similar to transfer. Wecan alsorelate the language of the gatekeepers to some immigrant varieties with non-guided secondlanguage acquisition (e.g. Goglia, 2009), which share linguistic features with pidgins. Forexample,Matras (2009, p.

When analysing the data from either a transfer or a language contact perspective, wewould generally assume one language to be underlying. Incontact studies we would say thatthe base language is Pirahã. In transfer studies, the base (or target) language would bePortuguese. The question is, however, whether we can assume that there really is just oneunderlying language. Indeed, in recent years contact linguists have questioned whether thereis one base language to every utterance (Siegel, 2008, p.

143), as is reflected in

Myers-Scotton’s (2006) ‘two-target hypothesis’.

Pirahã-

Portuguese contact

25

My argument runs along the same lines: the language of the gatekeepers does not

consist of a clear base language. Rather, it is a combination of Pirahã and Portuguese, inwhich the conceptual structure of Pirahã is mapped onto Portuguese lexical elements.xvi

Thus,it is not exclusively transfer during second language acquisition-

or interlanguage-

that hasformed this language, neither can it be fully explained by heavy lexical borrowing into anunderlying Pirahã structure. Rather, we are dealing with a combination of the two. Pirahã andPortuguese contribute in different ways to theresulting variety, combining the conceptualstructure of Pirahã for ease of processing with Portuguese lexicon for ease of communicationwith outsiders.

(1995).The influence of crosslinguistic, semantic, and input factors on theacquisition of English phrasal verbs: A comparison between Finnish and Swedishlearners at an intermediate and advancedlevel.Åbo:Åbo Academy University Press.

THOMASON, S. & KAUFMAN,

T.

(1988).Language contact, creolization and geneticlinguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

I would like to thank Jeanine Treffers-Daller, Francesco Goglia, Dan Everett and an anonymous reviewer fortheir comments on earlier versions of this paper.

ii

All members of the ethnic group speak Pirahã apart from one man who grew up outside the area and who hasreturned to the Pirahã in his adult life (Everett p.c.).

iii

I am using Dan Everett’s (2005) revised orthography of Pirahã, which differs from the orthography used in his1986 grammar sketch in that glottal stops are expressed as /’/ rather than /x/.

iv

My corpus was collected in January 2007 among Pirahã speakers on the rio Maici, Amazonas, Brazil. Itconsists of approximately 10 hours of recordings. This paper is based on approximately 3 hours of transcribedinterviews conducted in Portuguese with gatekeepers. I am grateful for funding I received from the CHLASCproject (Uli Sauerland & Mafred Krifka) to carry out fieldwork, as well as to Dan Everett and the Pirahã,without whom this study would not have been possible.

v

This is the old West Greenlandic spelling. The word was probably borrowed through this form in the writtenlanguage.

vi

My examples below are showing this allophonic variation.

vii

The speakers are identified

by their role in the community, GK refers to ‘gatekeeper’, cf. the introduction ofsection 4.

viii

I’m grateful to Francesco Goglia for pointing this out to me.

ix

Everett (1986, pp.

223) notes that the comparative formmelhor

‘better’, which would generallybe used in thiscontext by Portuguese speakers is not used by the Pirahã.

x

Since I do not have more examples this is speculation at the current stage and would need to be investigated ingreater detail.

xi

As one reviewer points out, this does not have tomean thatmais

could not have been borrowed in more thanone construction, including the comparative construction. However, I do not have evidence formais

being usedas a comparative in my corpus.

xii

It would be left for future studies to examine how the other expressions of ‘large quantities’ are used as Franket al. (2008) only report use ofbaágiso

‘many’ in their experiments, which may be due to the props used.

xiii

Sic: from the bridge one would drive along the Trans Amazon highway to get to Humaitá and not go by boat.The speaker may not be aware of this, however, as only few Pirahãs have ever travelled to Humaitá.

xiv

One could argue that in terms of Grosjean (this volume) the gatekeeper would assume a bilingual mode-

though still speaking Pirahã-

when communicating with an outsider.

xv

Though cf. Bakker’s (2009) findings on how Pirahã differs grammatically from pidgins and creoles.

xvi

There are only a few native Pirahã discourse markers in the language of the gatekeepers. These are elementsthat are typically affected by interference and found borrowed in contact situations or retained during L2acquisition (Matras 1998).